Page 20

Eighteen

Just keep moving.

Do.

Not.

Look.

Back.

I tell myself. Fighting the very real urge I have to stop crawling. To stop trying to fight him and let him do to me what he’s wanted to since we parted ways. Make me face the truth I’ve been unwilling to accept. That I’m not in control. He is. So he can make me feel as discarded as I’ve made him feel. It’ll hurt. Fuck, will it ever, but a part of me wants his punishment, because all of me knows that I deserve it. Maybe then, if I let him win and have this, I can allow my true fears to rise to the surface. To not numb them, but let them free. Let me free.

My movements are guesswork. The blanket of darkness I’m entrenched in has propelled my senses to a painstaking level of hyper awareness. As the air becomes denser, my airways trick me into thinking they’re being constricted. Each attempt at bringing new air into my lungs feels like an attack from the sharp pain that radiates through my chest at every inhale.

It’s so difficult to see what I’m moving toward… or on. I’m well aware of what soil feels like on the skin. It sometimes can be damp from moisture, but it’s rarely slimy or spongy. It never feels or smells the way the soil I’m trekking through feels.

“Neither of you are allowed access to this crawl space. It’s as old as the foundation. It isn’t safe.”

Warnings that hit like foreshadowing cloud my head as I hold my breath, indulging myself in the ignorant bliss that is believing that the uneven ground I’m crawling on, is just that, ground.

A collection of dirt with fragments of broken earth and not what I think it is, or what I know in my gut, is the truth.

A mound of torn flesh and bones that have surrendered their living conditions.

I muscle through, pretending that the stench is not what it smells like.

Rot—abundant piles of rot.

Bile flirts with my throat. An uncontrollable tang burns through my esophagus the deeper I plunge myself into the passageway below this house of nightmares.

What’s worse is that the stench, and the lingering effect it has on my skin, as horrid as it is, feels familiar. It’s as though each rotting scrap is clinging onto my limbs, trying to suck me in and jog my memory.

I shake my head. This isn’t the time for this. I can’t afford to stop and wonder why this looks familiar. I can only focus on how to get out.

It’s just what he gave you, Araceli.

Your mind is playing tricks on you.

Get. It. Together. Just. Keep. Fucking. Moving. You stupid—

“Oh, sister,” Harlan sneers off in the distance. Though the deep notes of his voice that echo in the cramped space are not as far off as I’d like them to be. He’s getting closer and his voice, cold as he’s become, is the jolt of energy I need to revitalize my limbs and motivate them to move. Fast.

Continuing forward, at lightning speed compared to how I was moving before, I can see the finish line in sight. Light finally breaks through the darkness. It’s menial. Not bright. Crimson. It’s the beacon I’ve been hoping for. I’m almost free and once I am, I’m never coming back here again. Never again.

Never.

Ever.

The thick air burns my lungs. I try to breathe, but it feels like the walls of my lungs are closing in, just as they always do when a panic attack takes over. I’ve made it this far, yet my mind—that tricky, fickle bitch—can’t help but let the games linger. To manipulate me. To trick me. I can’t trust my mind. I’ve never been able to. It’s why I’ve always turned to drugs and alternate realities, whether written by others or my own. At least then I know that if I see something, it’s because of an outside source other than the internal one that taunts me daily, when I’m sober as can be… myself.

More red light drips past the door that will be the exit of the crawl space. My eager fingers curl around the small knob, anticipating the fresh air.

A tongue clicks from behind me as it flicks into my exposed center.

Harlan.

I try to move and fight the current of pleasure and pain the competing muscle of his tongue is inflicting on me. He nibbles and bites his way on and around my sex, but he pulls me back with his hand and it only deepens the angle he can dart his tongue inside of me.

If I only knew then what a can of worms I’d open, exposing him to darkness, I would have never engaged with him. Pastor’s son or not. He’s his father’s son above all, and knowing the damage his father has caused, it shouldn’t surprise me that his own flesh and blood can do much worse.

“Let. Me.” I begin to pant and grunt, but he snatches my waist into his hands. Pulling me back and deeper into his face. “Go!” I finish my plea .

“No,” he hisses, burying his face between my ass cheeks. His words linger, vibrating me to my core.

My eyes roll both in annoyance… and pleasure.

“What’s the use?” I drawl. “You aren’t going to let me come.”

“Yet.” Another flick of his tongue at my pussy before he tugs at my folds, kneading my sex in his teeth, hard enough that the likeliness of blood being drawn is very real, yet it only adds to how good it feels.

Deciding not to fight it, I lean into his mouth, rolling my hips as I try to work with the erratic tempo of his split tongue. Though the more I grind on his face, the more he holds back, until his face abandons my center. I gasp from the absence of his mouth. The neediness in my breath echoes throughout the crawlspace, reminding me how weak Harlan makes me. In stillness, I wait for a command, or for him to say anything, but neither come. Instead, my wet and pulsing sex becomes home for something sharp.

“Shh,” Harlan coos with sinister excitement laced within his breath. “You take it so well.”

It?

What’s it?

His dick?

Is he talking about his —

A ravenous moan breaks my own thought process as Harlan ups the tempo of whatever he’s fucking me with. It’s cold and sharp. The more he plunges it into me, I fear the pleasure is diluting my ability to think straight and fight him off.

My jaw tightens, my words gritted. “What are you doing to me?”

“Edging you, like you’ve edged me.” Harlan seals his vague words with another violent thrust inside me. This one, harsher than the others but it gets me one step closer to finishing with whatever weapon he’s chosen to punish me with.

“You’re close aren’t you?” he taunts.

Yes .

“Yeah, you are. I can feel you trembling. What a whore, begging to come on scraps.”

“Scraps?” I pant.

“Scraps,” he echoes.

I inhale and the putrid scent I’ve been able to ignore is back, whipping at my nostrils with a vengeance. The word scraps lingering in my psyche elevates the odor to a vomit inducing level.

“Fucking scraps, that’s all I’ve given you and here you are, on all fours like a fucking beggar. Just begging for what big brother will give you.”

Harlan laughs and the notes of his baritone rattle my eardrums. “So pathetic, and you’re so close to escaping.”

I look forward to the door.

“Let me go,” I grit out.

Harlan surprisingly listens, withdrawing whatever he was playing with inside me. He inhales loud, sniffing the remnants of what I left on it.

“What was that?” I ask again.

“Who cares? Open it,” he instructs. His lips make their way to my inner thigh. He clamps down and his bite feels harsher than the fucking. Hard enough to draw blood this time and with my senses still in hyper-drive from the drugs, I swear I can smell the iron tinge stifle the air.

With my hand already on the knob, I turn it. The light, no longer sneaking past the crevices of the crawl space door, is now burning in my view. The red I had mistaken it for is in fact a deep flickering rust accompanied with shades of burnt orange and amber riddled throughout.

This isn’t right. No. This. Is. Not. Right.

This is impossible.

I glance back, past Harlan’s eerily calm stare, to the darkened tunnel we just crawled through, to do a double take. Ready and desperate to blame what I just saw on the drugs. However, the heat from the open flames is as real as the sweat it’s causing on my skin .

“Isn’t it amazing?” Harlan’s voice commands my attention.

I swallow thickly. Pushing down a wad of saliva that might as well be a shard of glass with how it tears at my esophagus.

“What is?” I whisper, still dealing with the assault my own throat is having on me.

“How a little truth dust can put it all into perspective.”

My brows furrow at his vagueness.

“Harlan, what did you fucking give me?” I grit through a heavy and clenched jaw. This kind of feeling of being transported to another time, another place, has never happened with any of the numerous drug trips I’ve taken myself on. I should be impressed. This is what I’ve always wanted. An escape. However, this feels too real. Too frightening. Too much like a precursor to the protective and possibly ignorant wool about to be pulled from my eyes.

“What I gave you and what I’m about to give you are two different things. But what you are currently giving me is a fucking headache.” He stops to move back into the dark pit, and for a second, I lose track of his movements. It’s only as his foot emerges, pressing down on my body that I realize he’s contorted himself once again, this time turning around and laying back, all so he can kick me, and nudge me forward. “Let's get a move on.” He kicks me again. Harder this time, it forces me to turn my head and move fully out of the crawl space. The main line from the house that the crawl space provides goes from his room, under the ground of the cemetery, to the main sanctuary. It’s been like that since the house was built well over a hundred years ago. Yet, what’s staring back at me isn’t another structure, it’s the open air. A damn near perfect replica to where Harlan and I spent Halloween together…at Heathen’s Cross.

As I rise to my feet, there’s no missing the surplus of filth covering me. My hands, my arms, my shirt and what’s left of my pants—since Harlan took it upon himself to tear them so he could have better access to me—are all covered. Stained in shades of red and inky black. Though, the blackness that steals the show is the fabric draped over Harlan’s body as he slips out of the crawl space after me.

He rises to his feet, blood flirts with his skin, visibly staining his shirt yet he looks unaffected by the very open, very real wound I caused from stabbing him. None of it makes sense. Either Harlan has built an impenetrable pain tolerance —likely with the help of drugs—or his need to fuck with me surpasses him addressing his wounds… or reality. Though what really has me confused is what he’s wearing. The very cloak the workers at Heathen’s Cross wore. Which, now that I think of it, is the same thing the two men who met his dad after the Devil’s Night service wore. Long, draping, all-black cloaks with brimming hoods, and the distinct patchwork on the sleeve of a slithering snake wrapped around a cross I thought was upright. Though, as I inch closer to Harlan’s towering frame, I notice the cross is upside down.

I extend my hand out near his arm, wanting to touch the patchwork, but he flinches away before stepping in front of me, seemingly aggravated by my advance towards him.

“Why are you wearing that?” I ask.

His back now facing me as I turn around to where he stands, his shoulders stiffen in aggravation before he turns his head to me. “This is what we all wear on initiation night.”

“Initiation night?”

“Yes,” he huffs, clearly growing bored with my questions. “Now follow me.” Harlan holds out his hand for me to take, but I don’t take it. Not yet. I want to. I have to. However, that word—initiation—repeats in my head. Impatience trickles to his veins and the large, already protruding one that wraps from the top of his palm to his wrist bulges more. “We don’t have much time,” Harlan quips, pointing his inked hand to his open palm, condescendingly so I can grab hold of his hint. “Hand. Now.”

“Will it hurt?” I ask another question that is the result of my mind running faster than my body can catch up.

“No,” he responds, unconvincingly.

“Fine, then.” I cross my arms, ignoring his invitation, or rather, command to hold his hand, as I try to maintain some form of dignity that’s clearly up for grabs this evening. “I’ll follow you.”

The old Harlan wouldn’t have liked my refusal, but he would’ve accepted it. But this Harlan? The one who has taken the boy I knew, and turned him into a man I’m not sure if I want to fuck or kill… or both? He takes my refusal as an invitation to do what he wants, unapologetically.

He steps closer to me, taking my hand in his. “This way,” he groans, yanking my arm as he leads the way through rows of hooded people sitting in pews similar to the ones in the sanctuary, but these are made of hay. They all look forward, not sparing us any looks, though the closer we get to the main cross that’s centered in the hay, I notice it isn’t empty. Silence that somehow speaks louder than words, or chanting, ever could, infects the air as we walk closer to the occupied cross. Flailing wrists adorn the coarse wood cross. The person’s backside mirrors my own with deep round scars scattered throughout their naked skin. The only difference is that the number two is etched into their backside.

Panic unexpectedly trickles into my veins as adrenaline makes my hearing go dull. I move forward, needing to see, even though I don’t want to. Rounding the cross, the naked, gagged person is none other than my stepfather. His naked front is just as bad as his backside…if not worse. Fresh cigarette burns mar his flaccid penis and they continue up his abdomen, in a distinct pattern that I’ve seen before.

Three large circles. Reminiscent of the ones Harlan painted in blood on my abdomen when it was me on that cross, and not his dad.

I turn back to Harlan. He stands hooded, looking like a dark god, staring at me with glee in his eyes.

My mouth moves faster than my mind can stop it. “What did you do to him?” I ask Harlan and even I’m shocked by the way my own voice is betraying me. It sounds…sad. Disappointed even.

Not waiting for a response, I jog over to my stepdad and yank the gag out of his mouth .

“Araceli,” he breathes. I hate how my name always sounds like poison falling from his lips.

I swallow the disgust down.

This isn’t the time. I need to get out of here.

I need to get past this.

“I knew you’d change your mind,” he says, catching his breath, sounding relieved. “I knew you’d repent… for what you’ve done.”

There it is again, that word, repent .

That’s all he cares about. That everyone around him show remorse for their sins while he goes on living as a liar, a phony, a fucking wolf in sheep’s clothing. The audacity. Even now, when it’s so clear to anyone looking in at the conundrum he’s found himself in, that I certainly couldn’t be the cause of it. He still assumes I will take the blame as I always have.

Harlan steps behind me, and his father’s gaze grows frantic in their weariness. Moving back and forth, up, and down, between where I stand in front of him, and where his son now has one hand on my neck and the other offering me an ice pick.

“You have repented, haven’t you?” Harlan’s father pleads.

“Don’t listen to him,” Harlan whispers in my ear, opening my clenched palm wide enough to slip a knife in. My digits adhere to the smooth handle as I keep my eyes on his dad.

“Oh, dear Lord,” my stepdad begins, bellowing. “Araceli, please, no. Harlan—”

With the knife in my hand, I jolt forward, breaking the hold Harlan just had on me. The sharp tip flashes before my stepfather’s eyes, silencing him.

“Stop,” I command. “Stop your fucking blabbering, your lies, stop all of it!”

It’s not lost on me that I should be reacting to this differently. That the sight before me, no matter how vile my stepfather was to me and Harlan, should evoke some sort of sadness in me. But, it doesn’t. Even with the questions I have as to why Harlan has gone out of his way to recreate the setting of Heathen’s Cross, and why he dressed like a member, I take this bizarre moment as an opportunity to grasp onto the karma that’s been awaiting this man that’s caused me more pain that any human should inflict on another. Let alone a pastor.

He peers at me confused. “I don’t know how it got to this, Araceli. I loved you like a daughter.”

My tongue clicks. “Liar.”

“It’s true,” he lies, yet again.

I inch closer, causing his constrained body to flinch. The knife curled in my fist feels like a magnet. With each second that passes, the force intensifies, practically begging me to make contact with his skin and end him.

“You were like a—”

I cut him off. “A daughter. Yes, I know. Pardon me for missing the memo. I didn’t realize using me as an ashtray, or a human punching bag, or a place to sink your, what was it? Oh yes,” and I air quote, “‘God given parts to exorcise the demon out of me’. Sorry, Pastor. Abuse and rape isn’t how you show love.”

The truth in my words does what I knew it would do. Take that demon that lays dormant in him and summon it to the surface. Gone is his pleading case, and here is the asshole I’ve always known him to be, for all the people around us to witness.

He laughs, dry and sarcastic. “You’re irredeemable. Just like she was.”

My hand trembles around the knife as he continues.

“Just like your disgusting mother,” he spits, disdain and glee dancing in his expression.

Harlan, who I almost forgot has been standing behind me, places a kiss on my neck before he steps in front of me to confront his father.

“Is that why you had her killed? Huh, Dad? Is that why you had Mom, and Araceli’s mom, and all the others who threatened your way of spinning God’s truth into your own, all killed?”

Harlan’s words stab at my heart. I always knew in my heart it was true. The evidence has always been mounting against Harlan’s dad. But his role in the community and his ties to law enforcement protected him. It helped him get away with murder.

“You can’t deny it Dad, there’s years worth of your extermination ploy rotting in that fucking house. I don’t know how you didn’t think I’d see it! Considering that you haven’t let me fucking leave you in years!”

An empty, hollow grin becomes smeared on his father’s face. Tears rim the pastor’s eyes like he’s hearing everything Harlan is saying, but he won't admit to himself it’s true.

That he’s the monster he’s been preaching against.

The one I always knew he was… yet even I am in shock.

“It’s all bullshit.” His dad brushes off the accusations, barely even giving Harlan the time of fucking day. As usual, all his rage, misplaced as ever, is on me.

Why should I be surprised?

Why would now be any fucking different?

“Is it though?” I break my silence, interjecting myself in their conversation. “Is it all bullshit? Everything your own son is saying makes perfect sense. You took my mother’s life, then claimed her death and ran with it. Making the people of our town think that the Devil himself was after us. That you were the first line of defense and protection we all needed to be able to escape the fate that found my mother… and Harlan’s… and fuck knows how many more. You fabricated the truth to protect your own filthy lies.”

A boisterous roar sounds from the crowd before a dull hum—a chanting hum—replaces it.

“You’re fucking crazy. No one will believe you. Not after what you’ve done.”

He keeps saying that. What exactly does he think I’ve done that could be worse than what he’s done?

He looks at me with a new wave of confusion and shock, almost as though he is reading my mind and mirroring my own confusion. “You can’t be serious, Araceli. You can’t still be denying what you are and what you keep fucking doing. Now get with it and untie me… now!” He roars, and I’m in utter disbelief that this man is so thickheaded. He is so lost in the delusions he preaches about that even now, with his son dressed as the leader of a fucking cult for fuck’s sake, he’s blaming me for this—like he’s always done.

“Araceli Rainey,” he begins, saying my name in a reprimanding tone that I will not tolerate. Not from him. Not again, and certainly not now.

“Don’t call me that,” I mutter, charging him. The edge of the knife now within inches of his neck. Oh, how I want nothing more than to plow it through his neck. I could. Fuck, I should. But what’s stopping me? Would turning to violence—the type of violence he has always mocked me for writing about—mean he’s right somehow?

Harlan senses my inner turmoil and he walks back over to me, stationing himself at my ear, but doesn’t say anything.

His father continues his taunting. “Rainey. Rainey. Rainey.” He mocks me. “That's who you are now. A disgrace to my name, but a Rainey, nonetheless. At least when you die, your horror will overrule mine.”

“Don’t listen to him, sister.” Harlan lifts his hands over his head to clap and the chanting intensifies.

“Shut up!” His dad yells but it only makes the chanting volume increase, yet every word Harlan is saying to me is clear as day.

“Tell him who you are,” Harlan demands.

I freeze. Who am I anymore?

I know who I was before I encountered Pastor Rainey.

Happy.

I know what I’ve become.

Numb.

Tormented.

Anything but happy.

But who am I? At my core. I don’t know anymore.

I don’t know who or what I am, other than angry .

“Tell him,” Harlan repeats, this time whispering something in my ear that makes my blood run cold. “Tell him that you're the daughter of Lucien Suárez.”

My throat tightens at the mention of my father. I’ve spent years numbing myself after his loss. Wanting to pretend that it never happened to the point that I began to believe it.

“Tell him who you are and what you’re going to do!” Harlan continues, sealing his demand with the drag of his tongue on my cheek, as he lifts my hand with the knife. “You are indebted to the Cross, to Heathen’s Cross , you can’t let him live. Tell him.”

“Oh please,” his dad bellows. “What are you going to do to me?”

“Payback,” I deadpan, and a sense of déjà vu strikes me. Harlan hums in approval as he begins his descent down my back, planting soft kisses down my spine, lowering himself to the ground. His mouth presses against my center as his nose becomes swallowed by the swell of my ass. I feel his lips brush against my skin in a trail that moves around my side until he is positioned right in front of me on his knees. Another hum ignites my skin as he begins to recite something.

“ Payback,” I deadpan, as I strike my clenched hammer-wielding fist down onto the top of his head.

His skull breaks with ease. The only simple thing that’s ever come from him. But I don’t want to only injure him. I want to annihilate him. For what he did to us. To them and all the ones before.

Blood drips onto his forehead, staining his skin, begging me to continue, and I do. One strike after another. Blood for blood. Eye for an eye.

Harlan snaps his fingers, and just as he begins to dive into my pussy, a cloaked figure walks over to us with something in their hand. I try to turn my head to see what they are holding, but pleasure rids me of my ability to think straight. Harlan is devouring me just like he did at Heathen’s Cross when I was the one hung up on the cross—and not his father .

None of this makes sense.

How we got here or how Heathen’s Cross is here, in the fucking backyard.

It has to be the drugs.

“Why does this all feel so familiar?” I whisper through a pant.

Harlan lifts his lips from my sex only long enough to answer. “Because you started something you didn’t finish.”

As he continues licking me, the cloaked person slips something cool onto my neck.

“You don’t lift a finger or that knife until I say so,” Harlan commands. His voice soothes my skin. “My voice may sound muffled while I’m eating this sweet cunt of yours, so make sure you’re paying attention.”

I peer down at my chest, seeing my necklace back in its place. Looking at the pentagram, another pendant now sits beside it.

It’s filthy.

It’s a… bone .

Similar to the ones the people at Heathen’s Cross wore, but theirs—although I don’t remember the exact details—were different than this one. I lower my chin to my chest, trying to study it. The long single bone is bound by leather on one end and hanging vertically down my chest, before landing between my tits. From what I can see, it’s wide at the top, tapering in on the sides towards the bottom and curved. It looks smooth except for the carvings. Three consecutive circles. I go to touch it, suddenly craving its cool edges on my fingertips, but Harlan slaps my thigh as he kneads the edges of his fingers to my skin, digging into them.

“Not yet,” he commands, cool and cryptic. His voice vibrates on my skin as he speaks. “There will be time to discuss the mess you made that you now wear around your neck, but for now, I want you to listen to me. Wait for my command.”